19 September 2013

Pink Shirt Guy!!

Last evening, I was a speaker at an event – I know, I can fool some people some time 🙂 . In any case, I reached there a little early to avoid traffic and settled down at a nearby bar with a glass of wine to work the pitch out in my mind.
This was a bar where the servers did not wear name tags. Which was a bummer since I like to address a person by his or her name to say thanks when leaving.
So, to be smart, I tried to quickly glance at the receipt to see the name of this elderly lady who was serving me. It was Anne. But I was struck by what name she had given me without asking my name 🙂
I did get her to take a picture of me – so I could put this post together !!
So after all the Starbucks names, I have a new name – The Pink Shirt Guy!!

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Category: Humor | 25 Comments on Pink Shirt Guy!!
18 September 2013

Regrets in my deathbed

One thing I often ask myself is what will I regret most when I am in my my deathbed. More often than not, I have concluded that spending more time with my kids and wife would be number one. Number two would be that I never got a chance to keep up with so many other people who crossed my life and made me in so many imperceptible ways the person I am (remember “intersection points”?).
But I have been curious about what I might be missing. So often, I ask elderly people what are the lessons they have for me. And once I got into real trouble because the daughter of this elderly person thought that my question was focusing on her parents’ mistakes (with the negative connotation).
Nothing could be further from the truth. Regrets, or mistakes of others can often be the best guiding star and narrating our regrets can often be the best guidance we can give others.
Finally, I came across something that satisfies my curiosity.

Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse who spent many years working in palliative care caring for those who were dying had many many conversations with her patients till they died. She eventually summarized her conversations in a book called the “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”
They were (with my self grades)
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. (I would give myself a B+ maybe even A- on this)
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. (At best C+ for me)
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. (D- 🙁 )
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. (Maybe I will give a A- on this)
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier. (Around B to B-)

Do you see me that way?
How would you grade yourself?
If you change nothing in your life, would you have some other regrets we should learn from?

Category: Musings | 25 Comments on Regrets in my deathbed
17 September 2013

Puzzle time

Returning home from New York. Ergo puzzle time. Today’s is a simple yet challenging problem.

Think of the various pairs of two numbers you can make using the digits 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 (each used only once) e.g. (2345, 16789) or (743, 821569) and so on.

Which is the pair (of two numbers) has the maximum product value (compared to other pairs)?

Category: Puzzles | 15 Comments on Puzzle time
14 September 2013

Knee How? :-)

Trying to heal my left knee, I have been alternating between the Merrel barefoot shoes and the Nike Frees. To test the knee, put in a non-stop 10 mile (16K) run in 95 minutes. 17,500 steps and 1550 calories later, the knee is holding up strong. The lungs, on the other hand, are not amused 🙂
After the run, made friends with a fellow runner, Karen – who is training for her half marathon. She took this picture of me taking rest after the run.
There is a Bengali word to describe my condition – “biddhhosto” 🙂

(The title of this blog was inspired by a terrible cross-language pun by my friend Narayan – who co-authored the Wall Street Journal crossword thus Friday)

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Category: Running | 6 Comments on Knee How? :-)
14 September 2013

Teenage-speak

Last night, I volunteered to take my teenager daughter to the football game in her old high school. On the way there, I made an attempt to see if I could wean her away from the constant earbuds-in-her-ears mode and have an actual conversation with her.
First I got the car radio on her favorite channel and then started talking about shoes, hairstyles, her girlfriends etc. Things picked up surprisingly well. They were going well enough that at one point of time I decided to start teasing her about boys.
So I went “how about ”
She: “Yeah, what about him”?
Me: “I thought you thought he looked cute”
She: “He did”
Me: “And….. What happened?”
She: “Puberty happened. That messed up everything”
Me: AWKWARD SILENCE for a long time.

She went back to her earbuds-in-her-ears 🙂 🙂

Sometimes, I think she does this purposely to shut me up. If that is true, she is spending waaaay too much time with her mother 🙂 🙂

Category: Humor | 18 Comments on Teenage-speak
13 September 2013

Chessboard puzzle

Send a personal message on FB- not comments if you are sending an answer. All smart Alec comments can come in the comments section though 🙂

Imagine a chessboard – with your usual 8 by 8 = 64 squares. Say the squares are one inch by one inch each. Now imagine rectangular blocks that are one inch by two inches each. So, any rectangular block can cover 2 adjacent squares on the chessboard.
You have to fill up the chessboard with the rectangular blocks without any rectangle spilling outside the board. They are allowed to overlap on each other though.

What is the minimum number of rectangular blocks required to fill up the whole chessboard? That is 32 of course.

Okay, now imagine that I tore off one of the corner squares on that chessboard. And I went ahead and tore off the corner square that is diagonally on the other end of the board. So, now I have a chessboard with two farthest corner squares missing.

Now, tell me how many minimum rectangular blocks are required to cover the whole board (that has only 62 squares now). You are allowed to overlap but cannot spill outside the board.

Even trickier – what is the minimum number of blocks required if you CANNOT overlap or spill outside either?

Category: Puzzles | 8 Comments on Chessboard puzzle
13 September 2013

Sleepless in Raleigh

Woke up at 4 am to catch a 6 am flight from Raleigh to Atlanta. Made it comfortably to the airport. Breezed thru TSA Pre. Sat in the plane. Got my coffee. All the passengers were boarded. And suddenly I got a notification from Delta on my iPhone that the flight has been delayed by 30 minutes.
The pilot came on to the PA and greeted us. I am like – does he even know that we are delayed? (I assumed ground control crew or weather issue).
Then he came on again and explained that a piece of equipment is not working. It is a third level backup though. But without it he is not allowed to fly in the dark or thru clouds!!!
So the mechanics are coming to see how quickly it can be fixed.
Except the mechanics are coming from Atlanta!!!!
And he canceled the flight!!!
As I was disembarking, Delta sent me another helpful message – the flight has been delayed by another 15 minutes!! Go figure.
Too sleepy to drive back to Atlanta, decided to take the next flight couple of hours later. Waiting in Skyclub now, tired and sleepy wondering what the the next adventure in the upcoming flight will be.

Category: Travelogs | 6 Comments on Sleepless in Raleigh